Support legislative efforts to restore home rule in Ohio

May 3, 2012

We should be wary of elected officials, possibly too close to industry, who deconstruct a hundred years of settled law in Ohio, eliminate home rule and give "exclusive" control of gas and oil matters to the state. We are in the midst of a seismic shift in Ohio as multinational oil and gas giants influence our statehouse and map out slick-water hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations over tens of millions of Ohio acres.

H.B. Bill 278, passed in 2004, is now causing tremendous grief for our mayors and fire chiefs who have virtually no say about the placement of deep injection wells or other oil wells within their municipalities. That same bill stripped county engineers and township trustees from the protections afforded by home rule, which allowed for road usage agreements. They now find themselves scrambling to find ways to protect Ohio taxpayers from the costs of repairing roads and bridges damaged by the intense use of heavy equipment during fracking operations. Recent legislation emanating from the General Assembly has resulted in generous rules and opened broad avenues of operation to the gas and oil industry including drilling in our state parks.

This is a great industry with a long history in Ohio, but their new technologies, mammoth equipment, volumes of chemical compounds and voracious appetite for the water needed to extract Utica shale oil reserves raise issues that should cross party lines. This is also an industry newly armed with various exemptions to environmental and right-to-know laws to which the rest of Ohio's industries must still conform. In addition to exemptions from the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, they are reportedly exempt from the Super Fund law.

Let's elect men and women to the general assembly who will work for the people, who will revise the statutes and remove the legislative language giving "exclusive" authority to the state in these matters.

We should support current legislative efforts to return to our communities their legitimate interests in the permitting processes of the gas and oil industry. Call your legislators and tell them to lend their support to legislation returning home rule to the citizens who are directly impacted by fracking operations.